Using Virtual Reality to help people access a new paradigm of mindfulness

The Challenge

lululemon invited us to redefine what it means to be fit, to transform the way people train, think, and live by creating a new platform to achieve mindfulness, emotional fitness, and balance.

The Solution

We partnered with lululemon’s in-house innovation and R&D division, Whitespace, to create an immersive Virtual Reality experience using the latest research on mindful practices. The resulting VR experience helps people access emotional fitness techniques which they can use to counterbalance the effects of daily stress, anywhere and anytime.

The Result

We created the RecoVR Hub, a VR experience that uses biometrics to monitor a person’s stress levels within a dynamic virtual environment. The Hub was successfully launched in lululemon stores in Toronto, New York, and London as well as pop-up events for the LA Marathon, Boston Marathon, the Superbowl, and in-store events in Seoul to celebrate the Winter Olympics. Guests were invited to travel to a beautiful virtual landscape and explore where their breath could take them.

It’s important for us to work with the best craftsmen in the world. The Finger Food team is really quite unique in its ability to bring the science and the virtual space into a physical space. Finger Food has been a key partner in our transition to digital technology platforms.

Tom Waller

Senior Vice President, Whitespace, lululemon

The Partnership

lululemon is more than an apparel company — they’re a technology pioneer that is empowering the individual to achieve their best self through balance, i.e. fitness in both mind and body.

thescienceof feel

Their internal innovation and R&D team, Whitespace, is investigating how emotional fitness plays a crucial role in stress recovery. Whitespace is leading in “The Science of Feel” which explores the complex mind-body interaction, enabling them to engineer unique product and experiences. They’re interested in how to remove the barriers to mindful states and by doing so train emotional resilience, amplifying their guests’ ability to achieve a higher degree of recovery and unlock their full potential.

This partnership is an excellent fit for Finger Food, a company known for empowering global businesses to innovate and lead positive change by creating industry-leading, user-centric, technology-driven solutions. We combined our companies two skill sets and applied them to one powerful mission—push the boundaries of reality to help people recover better and faster.

For our exciting new RecoVR Hub, Whitespace and Finger Food fused extensive data, research, and emerging technology to create an innovative platform that releases the power of emotional fitness.

MergingRecovery& BusinessGoals

Mindful activities like meditation and yoga give you a systematic way to train your mind to recover from stress. These can also serve as recovery interventions. They allow you to achieve greater balance and calm in stressful situations.

Whitespace wanted to showcase these findings while helping lululemon reach new demographics and explore fundamentally new product categories.

TheRecoVRHub

Virtual Reality is a powerful, yet underutilized, tool for mindful healing. VR lets you enhance your present moment awareness which is a very strong component of mindful practices like meditation.

Our immersive RecoVR Hub lets you harness the unique power of VR to quickly calm your nervous system through a virtual environment and soundscape that responds based on your biometric readings.

To lead our concept, we enlisted the help of one of lululemon’s global snowboarding ambassadors, Mason Mashon.

projectphase one.mountains

In this inspiring experience, you’re guided through Mason’s personal mindful practice. You’ll see, feel, and change the virtual environment around you to experience a healing story that’s unique to you.

For phase 1 of the project, we created a virtual campsite on an alpine vista. Wearing a VR headset and headphones, you’re transported to a landscape that looks and sounds like a coastal mountain base-camp.

biometricsin virtualreality

As you look around this winterscape, you’re guided by Mason who was born and raised in BC’s mountain ranges and represents the western Canadian lifestyle where lululemon got its start.

While Mason takes you through his mindful practice after a day on the slopes, biometric sensors are measuring your stress response. As you control your breathing and relax your mind and body, we algorithmically calculate the state of your nervous system. This drives the dynamic elements in the environment to change based on your present mindful state. It’s a highly-personalized experience that’s both calming and inspiring.

Bringing biometrics into the VR experience means you can control how you feel and get real-time feedback on your stress levels and emotional fitness. Our RecoVR Hub calms you in only a few minutes so you’ll achieve balance better and faster. And looking ahead, RecoVR Hub demonstrates how meditation and mindful practice will improve your long-term emotional wellbeing.

It’s a new era of mindful self care. Thanks to our partnership with lululemon Whitespace, we’re at the forefront of a revolution in health and emotional fitness.